Posted on 10/19/2005 12:09:54 AM PDT by freedomdefender
defense lawyers say they now believe there is a White House insider or former official who has been helping the investigation for months.
The lawyers say this is based on information grand jury witnesses heard about the actions of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby well before reporters Matt Cooper and Judy Miller testified White house officials leaked information about an administration critic.
The lawyers supporting the White House also point to a sealed legal brief Fitzgerald submitted to the courts more than a year ago that prompted judges to refer to the gravity of the case.
According to several news accounts, the grand jury is looking at the office of vice president Cheney. While the public attention has been on Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, other Cheney staffers are believed to have testified, including Mary Matalin, John Hannah, Cathie Martin, and David Wurmser.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Never trust the wife of a serpent-head Democrat.
I see Shuster has been following the Raw Story
What a Shocker
Now, there is reliable information. /sarcasm
I wonder when MSM are going to report on FACTS, not what some overpaid DEFENSE lawyers say?! I would assume one these "defense lawyers" is MSNBC, Dan Abrams' father who was representing Judith Miller of the New York Times? No conflict of interest here. /sarcasm
compare Shuckster's report to this one by Larry Johnson
Indictments Coming for Cheney, Rove, Libby, Hadley, Matalin...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/18/162434/59
Larry Johnson is such a dumb*ss.
No wonder CIA is in such a mess if he is an example of what they used to have working there.
I have yet to see anything that he says end up being the truth. He must have had lunch with Joe Wilson, the LIAR.
Not another Deep Throat.
They must clean house.
I see Joe Wilson must have been having breakfast, lunch and dinner with so-called reporters lately. He is making more "news".
I, for one, thinks he is just making noise. I really hope he does file a lawsuit. I'll even bring the popcorn & drinks.
******
Plamegate: The civil war
Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson are considering a civil suit against administration officials. If they do sue, they'd better be ready for a vicious attack by White House proxies.
By Michael Scherer
Within days, if not hours, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case will announce the outcome of his two-year investigation. But Patrick Fitzgerald probably won't have the last word. For months now, ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent unmasked by the White House, have been preparing to file a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration officials who disclosed her identity and scuttled her career.
"There is no question that her privacy has been invaded. She was almost by definition the ultimate private person," said the couple's attorney, Christopher Wolf, of the law firm Proskauer Rose, on Monday. "Suffice it to say, they have been substantially damaged, economically and personally." He said the couple would make a final decision on filing a lawsuit after Fitzgerald has completed his investigation.
http://tinyurl.com/cebza
"ultimate private person"
http://img.slate.msn.com/media/64/031202_VF_ValeriePlame.jpg
Even before the president's budget director parked his motorcycle outside the front door, there was an only-in-Washington feel to the Sunday night sendoff of NBC News White House correspondent Campbell Brown, on her way to New York and Today show stardom.
At the buffet at Brown's home in Adams Morgan, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV waxed indignant about the perfidies of the senior administration officials who he believes leaked the identity of his CIA-agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. … The buzz, though, focused on a shy and attractive blonde who sat nibbling finger sandwiches and discreetly introduced herself only as 'Valerie.'
—Washington Post "Names and Faces" column, Oct. 22.
Plame … mingled unobtrusively last month at a party at the home of the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn.
—Howard Kurtz, "CIA Agent Valerie Plame Goes Undercover in Vanity Fair," in the Dec. 3 Washington Post.
I can see that happening
It's like every 2-3 months Wilson pops back up in the news like clock work
bttt
I need to say this once more...
Valerie Plame was NOT A COVERT CIA AGENT!!!
They can print it all they want but it doesn't make it true!
That just gave me an idea: could Mary Matalin be the source for the Miller contact?
Or, perhaps, James Carville-via-access-to-wife-Matalin then speaking with Miller?
It's certainly possible, given that Matalin is in Cheney's office.
Plame may be "a private PERSON," but the issue as to whether or not a crime was committed against her is whether or not Plame was "a covert ('secret') agent" or not and/or if she had been within the recent past (as defined by law, think it's five, seven, ten years or something, and any position prior to that defined timeframe is not punishable by law even IF she was of covert status beyond the time protected by law).
The issue is whether or not she even WAS "a secret agent" because so far, everything I've read indicates that she was not.
She was employed by the CIA, yes, but not in any protected, private/covert/"secret" sense at least in the last recent years. Her neighbors knew she worked there. She could be seen coming and going to and from the agency as an employee. It was known to D.C. press that she worked there.
It's hard to figure out what's true and what's not in all the spin, but here's how I look at it. There's only one source that know's Valerie Plame's status without a doubt: the CIA. They're not talking, but their actions speak loud and clear: they reported that a potential violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act took place. That tells me this: whatever Valerie Plame's status at the time, it was covered by the IIPA.
The statement can also indicate others or another. Or even that Plame/Wilson or either are responsible for such an action.
There could still be someone else, yet to be identified, is the point because as to Plame, whatever her status, she was not being secretive nor "covert" in her employment status with The Agency and seems to have quite literally been taunting people to CALL her "a secret agent" for purposes of something similar to a "trip and fall" claim against a business.
I find the VANITY FAIR photos and their Plame/Wilson eagerness and willingness to participate in a COVER STORY with SPREADSHEET PHOTO of them both PRIOR TO their claims that she was "outed" to be a tad too eager to be found out.
They could very well be covering for someone else, is my point, which makes far more sense to me, trying to lead people astray as to target and individual/s involved...it seems to me to be the "hey, over HERE" ruse to send a pursuit over the border, so to speak.
The statement can also indicate others or another. Or even that Plame/Wilson or either are responsible for such an action.
There could still be someone else, yet to be identified, is the point because as to Plame, whatever her status, she was not being secretive nor "covert" in her employment status with The Agency and seems to have quite literally been taunting people to CALL her "a secret agent" for purposes of something similar to a "trip and fall" claim against a business.
I find the VANITY FAIR photos and their Plame/Wilson eagerness and willingness to participate in a COVER STORY with SPREADSHEET PHOTO of them both PRIOR TO their claims that she was "outed" to be a tad too eager to be found out.
They could very well be covering for someone else, is my point, which makes far more sense to me, trying to lead people astray as to target and individual/s involved...it seems to me to be the "hey, over HERE" ruse to send a pursuit over the border, so to speak.
The person who wrote the law says that it doesn't cover Valerie Plame.
snip
Those lawyers “familiar” with what is going on in Fitzgerald’s investigation have likely based their opinions on the types of questions the prosecution team has asked their own clients, who are presumably only witnesses. One theory is that Fitzgerald is looking at a general espionage law, 18 USC §793. But that law prohibits a person from revealing national defense information such as ship movements or submarine base locations. It was never intended to criminalize the mere act of disclosing a CIA agent’s name. Why? Because when Congress considered prohibiting revealing a covert person’s identity, it stated in the accompanying report that such disclosure should be prohibited only under limited circumstances to “exclude the possibility that casual discussion, political debate, the journalistic pursuit of a story on intelligence, or the disclosure of illegality or impropriety in government” would be chilled by the law.
Congress intended to criminalize only disclosures that “clearly represent a conscious and pernicious effort to identify and expose agents with the intent to impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States….”
Similarly, a conspiracy “to discredit Wilson for his statements critical of the White House’s use of intelligence,” another reported possible Fitzgerald approach, does not violate any law. If it did, every administration since George Washington would be guilty of a crime.
Ms. Toensing, a founding partner of diGenova & Toensing, is an internationally known expert on white-collar crime, terrorism, national security and intelligence matters.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
